The Twelve-Year War

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Prologue

When did the war start?

And do you know how it began?

Depending on who you asked, depending which one of the Five Kingdoms, you would receive a variety of answers.

Some would say the war began the moment the Duranian King was attacked in the middle of the night and was abducted from his castle.

Others would say it began when the beautiful Kiyohimean princess murdered her own parents, King and Queen Viola.

And there are some who'd say that the war had always been there, quietly brewing for hundreds and hundreds of years. That peace was nothing but a temporary illusion waiting to be unmasked.

But if you asked me, I'd say it began years before the first two alleged events took place. I say it began the moment I had wondered into the forest; had wondered into that dark, cold cave.

When I was eight years old, I had wondered deep into the forest with my best friend, the Kiyohimean princess. She was a year older than me, and our parents were good friends who visited one another frequently since our Kingdoms were close. So, naturally, she and I became good friends as well; the best of friends.

Ever since I can remember, my father always told me not to wonder too far away from the castle, always warned me not to go into the forest. Always ordered me to keep a good distance away from it.

And with good reason.

He would tell me scary stories, stories about people who walked in there, never to be found or seen again. That that was the reason he had built high walls around it, as a reminder to our people, as a precaution of the many dangers that lay beyond it.

That hot, summer day, as I played with the Kiyohemian princess just outside the castle's walls; as I laughed and ran into the treacherous forest trying to get away from her, because she was the Huntress and I was her Prey, I had run too far, had run far beyond the castle limits, ignoring the reason the wall was there for to begin with. To keep people away, keep people safe.

Before we knew it, we were deep inside the woods surrounded by large trees, and had gotten lost. The wall, in a way our North Star, our guide back home, was nowhere in sight.

Everywhere we walked, everywhere we turned, the scenery was the same. It was as if the forest was magical, enchanted, perhaps even cursed. Or maybe something was hiding inside of it, creating this illusion, creating this winding road to protect itself, to keep others from finding it.

"Oi, look... a cave"

To cover ourselves from the coldness and the heavy rain that had appeared out of nowhere, we took refuge in that mysterious cave. Everything had turned foggy anyway. We couldn't see far ahead, couldn't see where we were walking. There was no place to go.

"W-Where is Natsuki going? W-We should stay near the entrance"

She had suggested, shivering from the cold.

But I didn't listen to her and kept walking deeper into the cave.

I was a curious child, and the cave was new to my Emerald eyes. This cave was a brand-new world waiting to be discovered, to be explored. And I was feeling very adventurous already, was feeling very excited since I had never been that far from the castle's walls before.

"Don't tell me you're scared of the dark, Shizuru" I remember grinning at her when I said this, daring her to follow me.

But she wasn't afraid, not in the slightest. She was the bravest girl our age I knew.

I didn't need to say those words, didn't need to tease her about being scared, didn't need to dare her to follow. I knew she'd follow me anywhere. She was as curious as me, I knew she wasn't going to let me explore the cave alone.

At that age, time was a little fuzzy. It ran much differently than now that we're older. Time moved very slowly back then. Or at least that's how it felt like.

And that cave, it was a maze. A huge, long maze.

I don't remember correctly, but I think it was about five hours, maybe six hours in that we reached a dead end, that we found the heart of the cave.

And in the heart of the cave was where we found the most luminescent of Crystals, the brightest I'd ever seen.

At the time, it reminded me of the Crystals my father had described in his bedtime stories, had told me about before I went to sleep each night. Crystals so beautiful, so bright, and with immense amount of power. Crystals which gave immense amount of power, both physical and magical, to its beholders.

"It's beautiful, Natsuki"

She had whispered, and I had instantly agreed with her. It truly was mesmerizing.

And as our fingers reached out for it at the same time and had touched its icy, silvery surface, our eyes entranced by its beauty, by its brightness; its brightness that lit up the whole area, that's when our world went dark.

That's the moment.

I believe that's the moment the war began.

The moment our fingers had touched it, something strange happened. Something was released, something powerful. A signal, perhaps.

I remember hearing a loud, strong, deafening sound. I remember feeling as a gust of air pushed me backwards, and I remember falling hard on the wet, muddy ground, the same happening to Shizuru as well.

I remember her laying there next to me on the ground, faintly breathing, lying totally still.

I remember seeing her Ruby eyes looking into mine before she closed them. Remember seeing a softness, a tenderness there I had never noticed before,

"Natsuki..."

I remember her accented voice whispering my name,

"Daijoubu?"

remember her asking me if I was okay before we both lost consciousness.

And I remember dreaming.

I remember there was a lot of dreaming.

I couldn't tell when one dream ended and another one began.

I was in my room, laying on my bed, when I awoke two days later.

And when I had asked my father about it, about that cave, about the Crystal, about the noise and the light and the fog and the cold rain, he said that I had dreamt it, that it wasn't real. That he had found us in the forest unconscious, but that there was no cave, no fog, no rain, and most definitely no precious stone in sight.

Shizuru and I never spoke about that day, never got the chance to.

After that day, her parents visited my Kingdom less and less, and vice versa. So, we didn't see much of one another, didn't get to spend much time together, at least not until we were teens, when we'd sneak out in the middle of the night to see one another near the border.

As the months passed, we started to forget about what happened that day. More so since our parents had told us that it was all in our heads.

And we weren't sure why our parents had somewhat drifted apart after that. If it was because of what had happened that day, about us wondering outside the walls of the castle, or if there was something else going on that we weren't aware of.

It was much later, right before Shizuru's nineteenth birthday, that we figured out that our world, our lives, was much more complex and entwined than we had thought.

That's when our story begins, on the tenth year of the twelve-year war.

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Thanks for Reading!

The Prologue will be the only chapter in POV. Telling this story solely in POV will not be very insightful, so I will stay away from it.

This is my first AU story, I've never written an Adventure story, so I'm a little nervous about it, LOL.

And FYI, I will not be updating this weekly, will do so spontaneously. I'm supposed to be on a break :p

As always, let me know what you guys think.

Writing "For the love of ShizNat"